We now include the Eoganacht sept, South Irish, O'Mahoney, and Sullivans in our research to identify family trees through modal haplotype and SNP analysis using our Case Study Framework: http://eoganachtsepts.com/Case%20Studies.htm. The Bowe/Bowes cadet project is in the process of joining us. If you belong to a project considered associated with the Eoganacht septs through clan or cadet branch names, consider joining our research project. I will analyze all projects at the same time, in order to maximize the opportunity to see the larger picture for the Eoganacht sept YDNA and history.
By some the Eoganacht are considered a pseudo family/political party rather than leaders who passed on their leadership role to their descendants creating a strong YDNA lineage as did the Irish I in the North of Ireland. From my research this appears to fall within the range of my data and mirrors the conclusion found by the Trinity 2008 Study. However, there is still much to be learned by studying the descendents of the Eoganacht for their modal haplotypes, SNPs and family history.
I have developed a repeatable process, Case Study Framework, to build family trees and branches using the work of Dr. Anatole Klyosov specifically for mutation rate calculation. We identify clusters through patterns and using phylogenetic software. To verify the clusters as family trees or branches, we use Dr. Klyosov's mutation rate calculation formula. If the results are within a reasonable range, we have found a family tree. Since the % of YDNA tested per the population is quite low, it takes considerable work to find a valid cluster considered to be a family tree or branch.
The YDNA data I use in the Case Study Framework then reviews how those identified in the family tree are related. For this we need family histories. We would like to gather each project members family history and place it into a comment attached to the member name in our results workbook: see the name column (BY) in our current results workbook:http://eoganachtsepts.com/results.htm see rows 10 (McCarty), 60 (McGill), and 94 (Sullivan) for examples of how this information is presented.
Can you send us your family history is this format (please send your comments to comments@eoganachtsepts.com):
-Kitnumber -Known septs, clans, or cadet branch -Full Name of Earliest Known Male Ancestor Surname -birthdate -Birthplace -Emigration from..., Immigration to... -Other useful information
Most members do no know their family histories either in the U.S. or Ireland. We are hoping to gather enough information from those who do know their family histories that we may be able to extrapolate some information you may find useful.
I need volunteers to help format the family history in excel, developers to help build family trees and branches, and those who are interested in building out the surnames and histories of the Eoganacht septs, clans and cadet branches.
This is a large project and like many of you I have full time responsibilities. It has taken considerable time and research to get to this point and I believe I have provided considerable tools and knowledge to start building out the Eoganacht/South Irish research project in earnest. Without more help the project will get done but it will take much more time. I believe most of our members would like some answers sooner than later. You can be a part of the solution.
If you wish to be a volunteer or read about the progress of the research work, you can join the Eo'ganacht Yahoo Groups Forum.
Kathleen Sullivan Kerwin
admin for the Eoganacht septs, South Irish and Sullivan Projects
I wish to inform you that the O'Sullivan Clan forms nominating Riobard O’Dwyer, N.T. for the 2011 Clans of Ireland Order of Merit award, have been delivered to 3, Cherry Park, Newcastle, Galway.
You will be hearing further from us on the 17 March.
Thank you
Kind regards
Maura O'Gara-O'Riordan
Cláraitheoir/Registrar
Finte na hÉireann ~ Clans of Ireland
Dear Gary
I have double checked and your clan is allowed to nominate someone for the Order of Merit. You will find the information and nomination forms in the members section of the website and I am attaching them here for your convenience.
Best James
From: "O'Sullivan" <taoiseach@osullivanclan.com> Sent: 18 January 2011 20:40 To: james@clansofireland.ie Subject: Order of Merit
Dear James,
Thank you for your kind and informative e-mail. I was unsure if our clan was eligible to nominate an individual for the Order of Merit. Although we have paid dues for 2009, 2010, and 2011, we were only recognized at the very end of 2009 by the Clans of Ireland.
Despite having many distinguished and outstanding people in the O’Sullivan clan, I suggested an O’Dwyer be our 2011 nominee for the order of Merit! Riobard O’Dwyer, N.T. has selflessly dedicated his life to finding, reading, translating, and recording all of the church records (Catholic and Church of Ireland) on the Beara peninsula. He has single-handedly preserved the genealogies of the O’Sullivans, Harringtons, Murphys, O’Connells, MacCarthys, O’Mahoneys, etc. for posterity. He has served many of our people as genealogist and consultant over the past fifty years. He is now quite advanced in years and I am bracing myself for the eventual loss of a cherished friend and mentor.
I appreciate your offer to nominate in our name but, selfishly, I would like the International O’Sullivan Clan to be responsible for offering Mr. O’Dwyer for consideration. If we are deemed eligible to sponsor an individual for this honor I will call for a vote and prepare the application.
Again, I am looking forward to meeting you in person in April.
When you refer to haplogroups, I gather you mean subclades within a haplogroup. A cluster, such as South Irish, cannot be considered a defined subclade unless we find an SNP distinguishing it. While we all agree that there surely must be one, we can't assume there is. Then again, it's possible that there could be more than one if the Y chromosome is tested completely - but that is a far way off and would need much more economical technology to be affordable. Since The Glens WTY provided no defining SNP, I think it unlikely that Kevin's will either, since if anything new came from that new primer that captured L459, surely they would have noted it at the time.
For now, I recommend our focus be the haplotype patterns found in the Eóganacht surnames, both South Irish and other. The database that Mike Walsh has put together for R-L21 is not limited to those in the official project. I think we would benefit from searching similarly. The spreadsheet you have developed, Kathleen, certainly has potential to identify patterns. We could use its template and enter the whole selection of R1b1b haplotypes from various Eóganacht surname projects and find out if there are other similarities of haplotypes between surnames besides the South Irish - Type III, for instance, which is found in several Eóganacht surname groups - O'Donoghue, O'Mahony and Callaghan being the most obvious.
On the Trinity 2008 Study:
What I noticed that was missing from the Trinity 2008 study was division into haplogroups. They tested those with Eoganacht surnames and included a test group from the same area in Munster. They then compared all the DNA results to find a common thread. Without differentiating the results into haplogroups, the data that would have compared those within the basic standard deviation of the normal curve with the data outside the normal curve (later arrivals into the South Irish based on the entire list of possible events; name changes, adoptions, non-parental events etc.). This made too much confusion for there to have been meaningful results. The result at the end of the Trinity 2008 report is that they seemed to throw up their hands coming to the conclusion that there was too much diversity to come to a conclusion.
From what we have all seen from the surname results, there are diverse subsets of DNA haplogroups within the same surname project. If you don't first group by haplogroups, you're comparing too much undiffentiated data (my CPA audit sampling work gave me the insight). If you first group into haplogroups then measure all the results, I think that much more can be gleened from the results. Unfortunately the Trinity 2008 data available online does not have enough markers to group into haplogroups. Marge made an effort to contact the group that researched the Trinity 2008 study, however we have not heard from them yet. We'll try again and perhaps will be able to apply the haplogroups to the data to see if the results provide more meaningful results. In the meantime we can use this more scientific approach to our South Irish haplotypes and surname haplotypes.
I think we should contact Dr. Nordvedt after the Kevin's WTY returns. Since the new testing primer is being tauted as a better process, there is an excellent chance that the South Irish unique SNP will be found besides the L459 that has already been identified. With a South Irish SNP our projects will have clout. Along with Dr. Nordvedt's support, I believe those responsible for the 2008 Trinity study may be more amenable to working with us.
The results should follow the normal curve of those descended from the South Irish (Dr. Nordvedt's 12 marker version), as well as other groups that may be the later arrivals into the area. There will be assimulation of the South Irish to other haplogroups based on marriages etc. We should take the common thread (which is most likely more complicated than just the South Irish) and match this to the history of the South Irish. Of the 40 current L21 projects, my close match comparisons to haplogroups have shown several donors to have a close GD to the South Irish, as well as a close GD to other haplogroups. It would be interesting to see how these haplogroups are related to the South Irish by history.
We have all the right people in our project admins; Marge Sullivan (clinical phsychologist) has the methodology and Dr. Gary B. Sullivan (author History of the O'Sullivan Clan which includes all the Eoganachts) has the historical knowledge to coorborate our results. Along with the rest of our project admins (copied in this email) who are knowledgeable and experienced in working with DNA results, creating our own study is quite viable. Working with the external experts, would be priceless.
Kathleen
On Researching the South Irish Y-DNA:
It might be helpful if I shared a bit of background about Trinity College and the Smurfit Institute of Genetics. They applied and received funding from the Irish government for a population genetics study of the Irish for the millennium celebration. As far as I know, this was their first attempt at studying human Y-DNA. Prof Dan Bradley headed the effort and the main work was done by Brian McEvoy, a doctoral student at the time. They completed several papers, with Brian finishing the last one on the Eóganacht as part of his doctoral thesis - Genetic Investigation of Irish Ancestry and Surname History. Brian is now in Australia and no longer affiliated with Trinity at all. Dan Bradley has gone back to his original pursuits, basically studying cattle and chicken genetics. There is no interest or funding there in continuing any research on Irish human DNA. I have been in communication with Dan occasionally and know this to be true. We must accept their studies as is, with their accompanying limitations and biases.
Realizing the methodology used and the agenda behind some of their findings is useful to understand the relative significance of their results and conclusions. Their earlier papers did identify the different haplogroups found in their collected database. Though the 2008 paper does not say so, I do believe that all the results used in it are haplogroup R1b1b. The way Brian approached categorizing the results, however, he did not focus on any clusters as such and made no effort at identifying any possible subclades, which would entail SNP testing for which they were not equipped. I had opportunity to speak with Brian before he completed his paper, and without meaning to criticize, it appeared to me that his predisposition was to suggest that the Eóganacht were not of a common heritage, opposed to their previously ‘discovered’ IMH, which they purported to be a more pure and significant subclade (I think this was before M22 was discovered, categorizing it as a legitimate subclade). With such a limited number of markers tested, their database cannot compare to what we can obtain through the surname projects and Ysearch accessible to us. We are in a far better position than they were to research, identify and correlate the hundreds of haplotypes available to us for study.
While Ken Nordtvedt dabbles in all haplogroups and has information on his website about various subclades he has identified, his main focus in on Haplogroup I, of which he is part. He is always cordial if contacted to inquire of something specific to his website data, but I’ve found him to have limited follow-up interest, and I would not expect him to become actively involved in our research about the South Irish. His 12 marker haplotype is only part of the whole, which has been identified and the full modal established by others. Your own spreadsheets make evident that its usefulness is limited compared to the full modal, and you obtain far more resolution and information from the full modal when making you comparisons.
You have ambitious goals, which is commendable. I see them as divided into three parts. You hope to identify various septs within the Sullivans through yDNA testing and classification of clusters within the Sullivans themselves. You have interest in the Eóganacht, which are identified by surnames listed in the various genealogical tracts and pedigrees. You also wish to research the South Irish haplotype, since it demarcates a significant cluster of individuals common in the prominent surnames of the Eóganacht dynasty.
I would see the first goal to be focused within the Sullivan surname project itself, recruiting likely individuals who may have familial connections to one or the other of the historical septs of the Sullivans.
The second and third goals can be studied through the projects you have initiated but could be supplemented by ‘data mining’ the surname projects and searching Ysearch to obtain a larger database to work with. There are other organizations like DNA Heritage and Sorenson who have their own databases and search mechanisms available to us. I frankly don’t use them much myself, but would certainly be willing to provide links to anyone who would like to give it a go. I already have hundreds of South Irish haplotypes collected through various search efforts, but the more the better.
I’ve copied Finbar O’Mahony in this note as well. He is the new Group Administrator of the O’Mahony surname project, and while somewhat smaller at the moment, it does contain a significant percentage of South Irish (of which he is one) and he has great interest in this research. He helped fund the WTY test for The Glens.
Enough said for now. I hope this helps focus somewhat where our efforts should be directed. I had the impression that Kevin’s results were in completely when I heard about L459. If that is not the case, be sure to let us know when they are.
From: Becky Hogue née Mcknight [mailto:santoniorose@gmail.com] Sent: Tuesday, August 03, 2010 3:32 PM To:carrie@worldfamilies.net Subject: My Sullivan Family
Hello I have been looking at the Sullivan y-DNA project for several years now and have found one participant in my line, who either is no longer interested in communicating or they are no longer participating in the study. Either way I haven't been able to correspond. I cannot participate because I am female and there is no male in my line to take the test. This is my correct direct line. Some dates are not exact which I have marked as abt. but all others are from reliable family resources. If you are in this line and would like to communicate, please get in touch, Thanks Becky
Elihu D. Sullivan b. 1819 IN d. 1881 Dallas Co. TX m. abt 1843 TN, Mary J. Baker b. abt 1822 TN d. abt 1851 TN John M. Sullivan b. 29 Jan 1843 TN Sophronia A. Sullivan b. 1849 Lewis Co.TN m. abt 1852 TN, Rebecca Voorhies b. 6 Mar 1826 TN d. 9 Jul 1873 Dallas Co. TX Mary Jane Sullivan b. 15 Jun 1853 Lewis Co. TN James T. Sullivan b. 1857 TX Margaret A. Sullivan b. 1861 TX William R. Sullivan b. 1866 TX m. Emma Harriet Soper Charlie Elihu Sullivan b. Dec 22 1897 Ellis Co. TX d. 10 Jul 1974 Hillsboro TX m. 16 Nov 1916 Anna Lorene Allen b. 20 Aug 1898 Ellis Co. TX d. 1991 TX H.D. Sullivan b.. 1917 Richard Charlie Sullivan Avis b 1927 (living) Emma b. 1930 (living) -- "I am the inferior of any man whose rights I trample under foot." - Robert Ingersoll